There was a slightly worried tone to the email.
It was from an editor who had posted an advert for a new reporter.
They said they’d had little response, which they described as unusual.
Sad to say, it’s becoming far from unusual in my experience.
I think I had a similar email every day last week.
And having recently spent a week working for titles where recruitment can sometimes be tough, and having seen the sheer volume of jobs on offer at the moment, it’s no surprise that some editors are struggling.
In certain areas, the life of an editor seems to be a revolving door of departures and arrivals, with the search for new staff almost a constant presence in their lives.
I used to love interviewing for new reporters.
But the joy was that it was an occasional treat – an event that might happen two or three times a year in a team of a dozen.
What I loved even more was seeing reporters develop and grow – benefitting from training, support and opportunities.
Of our most recent cohort of graduates, only two have for the moment gone into news reporting.
I’m delighted for them, and they’re doing well.
But that’s out of 17.
Why so few, particularly when there are so many jobs out there and so many editors are desperate for staff?
Well, let’s cut to the financial chase.
There is still at least one publisher starting trainees on as little as £17,100 a year.
I had originally written £17,500 on the basis of my knowledge of one major publisher, but have now discovered another is paying even less.
When our students can easily get two-and-half grand more than that for entry-level social media, PR or content creation roles, who can blame them for turning up their noses?
That’s before you add in the weekend shifts, the constant buzz of WhatsApp groups, abuse from readers, and – for some – the fact that they’ll be enduring all this in their rented bedrooms.
And there’s no getting away from the fact that the reporters of today work far harder and longer than my generation ever did.
Aside from these potential deterrents, we do need to acknowledge that a lot of the young people we teach feel a lack of connection with local and regional news.
Despite our very best efforts – and local and regional news runs through our approach like lettering in a stick of rock, they don’t always quite get it.
And it is a strange beast at times, as a much-praised new book that I’m looking forward to reading, Panic As Man Burns Crumpet by Roger Lytollis, shows.
Ironically it was a reporter I spent some time with while doing my annual work experience for the elderly stint who’d had no formal uni journalistic education that best summed up the joy of community journalism.
He told me he loved people, wanted to tell their stories, and make a difference in the town he called home.
Nowhere has the need for community journalism – the sort where reporters live and work in the neighbourhoods they cover, and look the people they write about in the eye – been better shown than in my home city of Plymouth in the last week.
There has been a stark contrast between the content, timing and tone of the reporting by sites such as Plymouth Live and ITV Westcountry, and that served up by some national titles whose staff have clearly done most of their journalism from behind a computer in London.
It’s been unbelievably hard for those local reporters – particularly as one of their colleagues lost a relative in the tragedy – to walk the delicate tightrope of illuminating yet sensitive coverage.
But I’m also sure that they have also experienced a sense of pride, team spirit and belonging that will carry them through.
There is no journalism quite like regional journalism.
We launched a new campaigns and investigations module in the last year to motivate our students to make a difference with their journalism, and we have introduced them to inspiring reporters, broadcasters and writers at every turn.
But we and the industry clearly need to work harder to light the right fires.
Some of the extraordinarily welcome new jobs on offer in the last few months have come from the major regional publishers launching new sites in areas where previously they have had no significant presence.
There are a lot of tanks on lawns at the moment – and the hope is that all boats will rise on the tide of investment.
Sorry, I’m mangling my transport metaphors.
Weeklies editor John Wilson recently took aim at some of the new entrants to his market, saying that trainees should be protected from what he called poaching operations.
I can understand his frustration – and I know he really does care about his young reporters.
But trainee journalists can’t pay their rent with kind words, or buy food with a contract promising help with exams.
The tragedy is that, in too many cases, that training and support may not be there anyway.
I had a heart-breaking email recently from a young and talented reporter who quit their job because they see no way of ever qualifying as a senior.
Too often, young journalists have to navigate their own way through the NCTJ system, hassling for shorthand teaching, before simply running out of energy.
Those that manage it after a couple of years are rewarded with a pay rise which takes them to £21,000 – the sort of salary they should have been paid from the start.
For decades, the industry built its business model on a belief that young staff will suck up poor pay and conditions because the media jobs market is so competitive, and that if it doesn’t work out with one reporter, there’ll be another coming round the corner in a minute to take their place at the interview table.
If the difficulties so many editors are now facing don’t show the madness of that business model, nothing ever will.
Some of the new, specialist roles which have been advertised in the last few months have come with more imaginative salaries.
But general reporters – the people who form the beating hearts of newsrooms, real or virtual – are still stuck in a financial time warp.
We’ve developed some great partnerships with local employers in recent years.
But we – and other courses which also have fantastic links – could go deeper.
It makes sense to me for regional publishers to forge three-year links with our students, selling the joy of community journalism and wooing them for future employment, while ensuring their salaries really are competitive.
Editors or other senior figures should be alongside us as we develop the attitudes and skills of a new generation, selling their industry and opening eyes to the wide range of roles now being offered by major publishers.
I’d like to give some thought to developing that kind of relationship, and am about to send the first email to get the ball rolling.
It would be time-consuming for the companies.
But far less time-consuming, I would suggest, than the constant merry-go-round of job ads, interviews and resignations.
In the end, it’s not just reporters who end up poorer in the current system.
Society and democracy do too.
paulwiltshireblog 